The Spiritual Lives of the Great Composers

As I read each one of the stories in the book, The Spiritual Lives of the Great Composers by Patrick Kavanaugh, I was touched with how every composer had to overcome his own unique set of challenges to achieve greatness. The one that touched me the most was the story of Anton Bruckner. I was already familiar with many of the great composers, but didn’t know anything about Anton Bruckner. Although all of the composers featured in this book shared various degrees of religious faith in God, I felt that Bruckner understood better than any other composer that the only one he ultimately answers to is God. He was quoted as saying, “Sometime I will have to give an account of myself. How would the Father in Heaven judge me if I followed others and not Him?”

How easy it is to listen to all the voices that pull us in different directions away from what God wants us to hear. Bruckner is a superb example of someone who did not become what others wanted him to be. “He listened to the ‘voice from within’ and looked to God, ‘whose praises he sang in every note of his music.’ Bruckner had a strong ‘conviction that only he who believes and trusts finds true peace and the glory of the Lord.’”

Bruckner also set a great example of perseverance. He experienced decades of hostility from various people in the music community. Sometimes people in the audience would walk out when his symphonies were performed. Another time a director told him to quit composing and threw his symphonies in a trash can. One critic called Bruckner “a fool and a half” and others criticized his music as being “insatiable rhetoric” and “unsingable.” A work that had been accepted by the Vienna Philharmonic was rejected after the first rehearsal. Bruckner found himself the enemy of a famous music critic that gave such malevolent reviews that it became nearly impossible to have his works performed for over a decade, “yet Bruckner continued to compose, believing that this talent was a trust given by God.”

Although Bruckner was not only unappreciated and attacked from many fronts for what he created, he did not attack in kind. “Instead, he continued to compose work after work, believing that his efforts would eventually be blessed...He so firmly believed that God wanted him to compose that he could neither desist nor waste time in meaningless verbal battles with his detractors.”

How often do we get caught up in feeling discouraged, overwhelmed or depleted when our initial or even ongoing attempts to do what we feel or know is right, isn’t met with the outcome or approval from others that we had hoped for? Do we just give up? Stop trying? Change our course of direction so that the world will give us their stamp of approval? It takes a lot of courage, faith and conviction to swim against the stream.

In time, the world came to love Bruckner’s great works and even to scorn those who disagreed. Bruckner never retaliated against his foes. He patiently endured the insults and attempts to stop his work and quietly continued to go on fulfilling his life’s mission. He never lost his faith in God. Anton Bruckner’s music is a lasting legacy of enduring faith, perseverance and humility. I will never listen to his music the same way again.